[101157] in North American Network Operators' Group
Using RIR info to determine geographic location...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Drew Weaver)
Wed Dec 19 20:33:17 2007
From: Drew Weaver <drew.weaver@thenap.com>
To: "nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2007 20:44:34 -0500
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
Is this becoming a more common or less common practice as we slide =
ourselves into the last week of 2007? The reason I am wondering is we have =
noticed some 'issues' recently where correct info in the RIR causes very in=
efficient and sometimes annoying interaction with some of the world's large=
st online applications (such as Google) lets say for example that a custome=
r in India purchases dedicated server or Co-Location hosting at a HSP in th=
e United States [very common]. So the RIR shows that the customer is in Ind=
ia, so when the customer interacts with any google applications google auto=
matically directs this traffic to google.in (or the India version of whiche=
ver app)....
More unfortunate than this fact, is the fact that it appears that s=
ervices and application providers such as google are caching RIR data for a=
n "unknown" amount of time. Which means that if a service provider SWIPs an=
allocation to a customer (lets use the same example... again in India) (sa=
y a /24) to a user, and then that user subsequently returns that allocation=
and the service provider re-allocates in smaller blocks to different custo=
mers in say /29, /28.. et cetera... the problems related to this issue are =
compounded (30 customers being affected, instead of one...) by this caching=
...
Obviously providing RIR information is the responsibility of servic=
e providers (it is even ARIN's policy) has anyone else in the community ran=
into issues such as this and found solutions or workarounds?
Happy holidays to all on NANOG :D
Thanks,
-Drew
